Reading in the mid-Victorian Age

The great-great grandmother of Diana, Princess of Wales, was one serious reader: so much so, that she kept a journal of her reading in the 1840s:

The excerpts are from the following novels, in order of their appearance in the notebook, with the date of their first publication. Fourteen of the eighteen are by women, and nine of the novels were first published during the same three-year period that this commonplace book received its entries:

1. Emily Charlotte Mary Ponsonby (1817-1877), The Discipline of Life: Isabel Denison (1848)
2. Elizabeth Missing Sewell (1815-1906), Amy Herbert (1844)
3. Harriet Lister Cradock, Hon. (fl. 1834-1881), Anne Grey: A Novel (1834)
4. Elizabeth Caroline Grey (1798-1869), The Rectory Guest (1849)
5. Barbara Holfland (1770-1834), Self-Denial: A Tale (1827)
6. William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), The History of Pendennis: His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy (1848-1850)
7. Charlotte Brontë (1816-1855), Shirley: A Tale (1849)
8. Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein (1766-1817), Corinne, ou, L’Italie(1807) [extracts in French]
9. Menella Bute Smedley (1820-1882), The Maiden Aunt (1845)
10. Gore (Catherine Grace Frances) (1799-1861), The Débutante; Or, The London Season (1846)
11. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), Hyperion: A Romance (1836)
12. Elizabeth Caroline Grey (1798-1869), Aline, An Old Friend’s Story (1848)
13. Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Waverley (1814)
14. Felicia Skene (1821-1899), Use and Abuse: A Tale (1849)
15. Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870), Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (1846) [extract in French]
16. Anne Caldwell Marsh (1791-1874), Lettice Arnold: A Tale (1850)
17. Dinah Maria Mulock Craik (1826-1887), The Ogilvies: A Novel (1849)
18. Julia Kavanaugh (1824-1877), Nathalie: A Tale (1850)

Some continue to be read today, like Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley and Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley, while others like The Rectory Guest and The Maiden Aunt are nowadays little known, let alone read.

Adelaide is clearly reading novels not just for plot, but more importantly for the insights they provide into the human condition. Novels were a place in which religious, philosophical, and moral conundrums could be explored by female authors as well as male and the thoughts generated by their exploration made available to readers of both genders in an acceptable vehicle. The following are some short examples of what she was extracting from these novels:

From Amy Herbert: “Feelings are like the horses which carry us quickly & easily along the road, only sometimes they stumble, & Sometimes they go wrong, & now & then they will not move at all: but duty is like the coachman who guides them, & spurs them up when they are too slow, & brings them back when they go out of the way.”

From the second volume of Shirley (noted as being on page 208 in the edition she was reading): “Most people have had a period or periods in their lives when they have felt thus forsaken; when having long hoped against hope, and still seen the day of fruition deferred.”

From Agnes Grey (volume 3): “There are moments when we feel the want of a comforter, of some one to whom we can confide, our feelings, our sorrows, our hopes. Yes, our hopes!”